The Crazies Director Breck Eisner Hired To Helm Stretch Armstrong

There was a time when Twilight star Taylor Lautner was attached to star in a film about the classic toy Stretch Armstrong. Then Abduction happened. The John Singleton action flick, famous for not actually having any abductions in it, was not only mercilessly torn apart by critics but was a complete box office bomb. There was a long stretch of silence about the Stretch Armstrong project after that, an indication to most that the project was having issues, and eventually Universal let the rights go to Relativity Media. The studio promptly slapped an April 2014 release date on the movie, suggesting that development wouldn't be rushed. We haven't heard about it since - the last report was in January- but now apparently the studio has found someone for the director's chair.

Breck Eisner, who turned heads with his remake of George Romero's The Crazies back in 2010, has signed on to helm Stretch Armstrong, according to THR. The filmmaker has been attached to a number of projects since his horror film, the most notable being the Escape From New York remake and Red 2, but he hasn't been behind the camera on a feature for two years. The trade doesn't say how the plot of the new film is going to operate, but many may remember the toy as being an action figure that you could stretch to extreme lengths and then release, only to have it return to its normal shape. Dean Georgaris will handle the screenwriting duties.

I would hope that they plan to go the comedic route with this project, as the subject matter is far to silly to be taken seriously, and if that's the case the hiring of Eisner is interesting. He doesn't have much experience in comedy, the closest film he has to the genre being the adventure movie Sahara, so we'll have to wait and see if he can pull it off.